Saturday, July 14, 2012

Big Journalism: AP accuses Conservatives of Blocking Business

I wrote the following post at Big Journalism on Wednesday taking on a very biased article by the AP which blamed conservatives for being roadblocks to business:

On Monday afternoon, as President Obama announced his support for a tax increase that would affect nearly 900,000 small businesses, the Associated Press tweeted the following tweet and story to implicate Republicans as “roadblocks” to business:

The story begins: "Conservative Republicans have roughed up the business community this year - and it's not over yet."

Really? Apparently, the Associated Press has ignored that Democrats' opposition to the job-creating Keystone Pipeline or the Supreme Court upholding the $500 billion Obamatax law will destroy jobs, among other examples. However, those oversights are only part of the media’s bias on display in this piece.

The article then goes on to assert that conservative Republicans' supposed opposition to recent transportation bills, antipathy towards the Law of the Sea Convention, and resistance to re-authorization of the Export-Import (Ex-Im) Bank are to blame for putting “roadblocks” to business.

The author, Donna Cassata, notes some conservatives preferred that the transportation projects be funded at a state level, going on to state, ”[n]ine short-term extensions later - and almost three years after the last transportation bill expired - businesses finally prevailed last month.” Cassata fails to mention that in 2009 and 2010, both Houses of Congress were controlled by Democrats, and during the last year, President Obama threatened to veto any transportation bill that included approval of the job-creating Keystone Pipeline. Democrats had ample opportunity to approve a transportation bill for two years but failed, and President Obama’s anti-energy development agenda prevented the bill from passing quickly since Republicans took over the House following the 2010 elections.